The apple blossom special

We have two apple trees, a big old one and a baby. Since we started pruning the big old one a few years ago, we've had some bumper harvests. It makes huge, tart apples; I think it may be a gravenstein.

The baby has had a rough time. First, it got planted amongst a bunch of other bushes and perennials: we didn't even know it was there until the first spring after we moved in, and when we discovered it (via its brave few blossoms) it was on its side under a crush of other foliage. Mum propped it up using a forked stick from some other pruning job, to encourage it to re-root properly, and we slowly began to edit out the surrounding bushes. Here's what it looked like this February - you can see the remains of last year's flox and artemisia all around it, one remaining other broadleaf evergreen bush just to its left, and the forked stick, still helping to keep it upright. (Further left and along the fence is the cotoneaster with its red berries.)

In March we decided the final bush-to-the-left (ha ha that's a political oxymoron, or some kind of moron) was ugly and messy and needed to go, so Mum dug it out, and we put in a couple of variegated iris instead.  They have a much cleaner look, and give the baby plenty of space. They also "talk" to the regular iris further over by the oak tree, and to the Dusty Miller (seen below in the foreground).

Now it is April, and check out the baby in all its glory: I think come fall we'll be eating a lot of the tasty little apples this sweetie produces!

The big old tree is also looking pretty splendid. I tried to get some closeup shots of the blossoms. The geek suggested I put my camera in macro mode, so I moved the little switch to the "M" setting, but was pretty frustrated with the results.

Further consultation with the geek uncovered the fact that the "M" stands for "manual focus", not "macro", so I went back to the "A=auto focus" setting with the little flower next to it (the flower indicates macro, I can't imagine why - doh!) and had much better luck.

Then, when we got home this evening, I asked the geek to go out with his camera and do some jardin-documentation. Whoohoo, now I have geek-photos to keep us going for a week or so! Here's his version of my macro shot, for starters.

And here's a geek portrait of Oz, who really felt that we ought to be indoors doing more important things, like doling out chow. 

 

"Flowers shmowers."